Abstract   Introduction The way banks compete has changed dramatically during recent years, mostly because of international trends such as advances in information technology, globalisation and deregulations. This has made competition harsher meaning that survival and success requires knowledge about the competitors and understanding about the way they act and react. Within marketing there is a need to identify suitable strategies to acquire knowledge about competitor’s marketing and methods to how to react to it.   Purpose The purpose of our research study is to analyse how companies in the bank industry are aware and react to their competitor’s marketing activities.   Method We have conducted a qualitative study and used a mix of the inductive and deductive research approaches. We chose to do semi-structured case studies, gathering descriptive data from large Swedish banks with offices located in Jönköping. The banks that were included were Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB, and Swedbank.   Conclusions Our analysis concludes that staying aware of competitors marketing is important for companies to be able to react and counter on a promotion attack. We found that there are certain methods that can be used to stay alert: competitor marketing analysis, customer focus and probing. We also concluded that standardisation, differentiation and presence are required to react to competitors marketing.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p> </p><p><strong>Introduction</strong></p><p>The way banks compete has changed dramatically during recent years, mostly because of international trends such as advances in information technology, globalisation and deregulations. This has made competition harsher meaning that survival and success requires knowledge about the competitors and understanding about the way they act and react. Within marketing there is a need to identify suitable strategies to acquire knowledge about competitor’s marketing and methods to how to react to it.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Purpose </strong></p><p>The purpose of our research study is to analyse how companies in the bank industry are aware and react to their competitor’s marketing activities.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method</strong></p><p>We have conducted a qualitative study and used a mix of the inductive and deductive research approaches. We chose to do semi-structured case studies, gathering descriptive data from large Swedish banks with offices located in Jönköping. The banks that were included were Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB, and Swedbank.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p><p>Our analysis concludes that staying aware of competitors marketing is important for companies to be able to react and counter on a promotion attack. We found that there are certain methods that can be used to stay alert: competitor marketing analysis, customer focus and probing. We also concluded that standardisation, differentiation and presence are required to react to competitors marketing.</p>

DURANTI, Cleber Marchetti. Seleção de notícias online para inteligência competitiva - Uso de ontologia de domínio do negócio para expansão semântica da busca na internet. São Paulo, 2013. Tese (Doutorado em Administração) - Departamento de Administração, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo. A internet disponibiliza o acesso a notícias e informações em volume crescente a respeito do ambiente em que as empresas operam, e estas precisam se manter a par dos movimentos dos atores do seu mercado de atuação e dos temas pertinentes ao seu negócio para se manterem competitivas. O crescente volume de dados, porém, leva à sobrecarga de informações, quando o volume de informações disponíveis é maior que a capacidade de processamento dos usuários. Torna-se então necessário o desenvolvimento de métodos e ferramentas que ajudem a separar a informação potencialmente útil da informação irrelevante. Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta que utiliza a modelagem da área de negócio na forma de uma ontologia como subsídio para formulação de melhores buscas na internet, através da expansão semântica interativa das palavras-chave utilizadas pelos usuários quando da busca num buscador comum da internet - ainda o método mais utilizado para coleta de informações da internet. Uma ontologia do domínio de negócio \"Outsourcing de TI\" e uma interface para uso dessa ontologia na expansão das buscas dentro deste domínio são desenvolvidos. O protótipo é testado por meio de simulações de buscas e testes por usuários da área de TI, com os quais é feito um levantamento de aceitação de tecnologia utilizando o modelo TAM-3 adaptado para a avaliação do protótipo. Os resultados do levantamento indicam uma boa aceitação da solução nos aspectos de utilidade, facilidade de uso e nas demais dimensões do modelo TAM3. / The internet provides access to news and information in increasing volume about the environment in which companies operate, and they need to keep up to date about the movements of the actors of their market and the topics relevant to their business in order to keep their competitiveness. The growing volume of data, however, leads to information overload, when the amount of information available is larger than the processing capacity of its users. It becomes necessary then to develop methods and tools that help separate potentially useful information from irrelevant information. This research presents the development of a tool that uses the modeling of the a business area in the form of an ontology as a support for the formulation of better internet searches through interactive semantic expansion of keywords used by users when searching in an usual internet search engine - still the most widely used method for collecting information from the internet. An ontology of the business domain \"IT outsourcing\" and an interface to use this ontology in the expansion of searches in this area are developed. The prototype is tested by simulations and test searches by IT users with whom a survey is done using the qualitative model TAM-3 adapted to evaluate the prototype. The survey results show good acceptance of the solution in the aspects of usefulness, easy of use and the other dimensions of the TAM3 model.

This thesis concerns Competitive intelligence, which is relatively new and unknown discipline in Czech republic, but despite this fact it is evolving very quickly. The goal of the thesis is to describe competitive intelligence, it's theoretical background, concepts, methods and tools and to apply them on chosen sector of czech economy. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 focus on theoretical background of competitive intelligence and it's place in company's structure. Chapters 3 and 4 describe some selected analytical methods and tools of CI. Finally the chapter number 6 analyses the market with logistics services in Czech republic.

This thesis deals with application of Competitive Intelligence methods in market environment of colocation datacenters in the Czech Republic. The main objective is to analyze competitive environment of colocation datacenters in the Czech Republic. In the theoretical part of this thesis Competitive Intelligence and analytical methods are described. Typical colocation services including cloud computing are described. In the following part the topic of datacenters, their basic types and classification are discussed. Two related topics of outsourcing and Service Level Agreement are also mentioned. The practical part of this thesis is divided into three areas. The first area deals with development of the world datacenter market and discusses trends in the industry. The second area deals with the description of the market structure and analysis of the wider competitive environment of colocation companies in the Czech Republic. This competitive environment was analyzed using Porter five forces analysis. The third thematic area is dedicated to competitive analysis of six colocation companies operating on the territory of Prague. These companies were analyzed with the use of competitive analysis method. In conclusion there are given relevant resources in terms of Competitive Intelligence for the colocation companies that were analyzed in the final part of thesis.

This diploma thesis is aimed at a creation of offers in a company. The proposal of an offer system in the Pohoda information system which the company uses is described in this thesis. An analysis of offers created in 2013 according to the specified indicators is another part of this work. The work contains a theoretical part focusing on an area of offers, business meetings, ERP systems and Competitive and Business intelligence. In the next part of the work the company which the proposal is made for as well as the Pohoda information system, where the specific functions and parts of the system are described, are presented. The system of offers creation which is used in the company now and also its current shortcomings are introduced in this thesis. Next a proposal for improving of the current system and an implementation proposal to the Pohoda information system is created. In the last part of the work the analysis of offers from 2013 is made. An estimate of the benefits of the proposed system for individuals and for a company and a summary of the processed analysis are both contained in the conclusion of this work. The thesis contains annexes an example of a current offer and data which were used for the analysis of the offers from 2013.

The investigation applies the intelligence cycle and researches the degree of Utopian development, as observed at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (BGW), Virginia, utilizing a common business and competitive intelligence tool, known as the SWOT.  The research uncovered numerous aspects apparent at the target, BGW, many of which served to re-classify the theme park development from that of a premier theme park to a themed amusement park.  The research question was concluded on by indicating that there was no apparent sincere or consistent attempt being made to perfect the numerous venues at the park, and that no specific cause or reason was identifiable as to the intentionality or unintentionality of the neglect of the research question, in terms of design intent toward constant improvement, as in Utopian-driven expectations of development. / Master of Landscape Architecture

One of the proxies for the success of a corporate strategy is firm performance. This is because “performance is a surrogate for the alignment between an organization’s internal processes (strategy, structure, etc) and the external environment.”1 Business excellence therefore hangs together with the attainment of such an alignment. It is two of the processes that support such an alignment between customer and supplier that are the subject of this paper. The processes in question are so called “Key Account Management” (KAM) and competitive intelligence (CI). [... aus der Einleitung] 1 Subramanian R., IsHak S., Competitor Analysis Practices of US Companies, 1998, S.13

This diploma work analyses existing competitive intelligence of the firm. Contains analysis of competitive intelligence awareness and its utilization like competitive advantage in Czech consulting companies. The work includes proposal for competitive intelligence strategy or recommendation and complementation of existing strategy.

A globalização e os avanços tecnológicos provocam mudanças muito rápidas, gerando incertezas e dificultando a tomada de decisões em organizações. O uso de um Sistema de Inteligência Competitiva (SIC) fornece informações analisadas, permitindo a tomada de decisões com segurança em um curto espaço de tempo, facilitando a sobrevivência de organizações em um cenário competitivo. Algumas das técnicas utilizadas no campo da Inteligência Competitiva (IC) são aplicáveis para monitorar tendências tecnológicas e de inovação, sendo assim, são aplicáveis a laboratórios de pesquisa acadêmica que visam ao desenvolvimento tecnológico, à inovação e à solução de problemas práticos. O Laboratório de Eletrônica Embarcada (LEE) é frequentado por alunos de graduação e pós-graduação (mestrado e doutorado) da Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos. Por ser um ambiente acadêmico, de formação de pessoas, existe alta rotatividade de recursos humanos, o que é prejudicial do ponto de vista de conhecimento. Cada pesquisador que se forma leva consigo todo o material e conhecimento adquiridos durante a pesquisa. Daí surge o interesse da coordenação do LEE em gerir o conhecimento e implantar um Sistema de Inteligência Competitiva (SIC) através do uso de ferramentas computacionais que auxiliem o processo de gerenciar o conhecimento. Utilizou-se para a implementação do SIC o software Zotero, disponibilizando informações sobre as pesquisas realizadas ou em andamento no LEE, principalmente o material bibliográfico já levantado por outros pesquisadores, facilitando a revisão de literatura dos novos alunos, a escrita de artigos científicos e a escolha do tema de pesquisa. Como resultados, obteve-se a redução do tempo gasto com a pesquisa bibliográfica e com a confecção de citações e referências, visto que o software realiza estas operações automaticamente, além de auxiliar na tomada de decisões, como por exemplo, a escolha do tema da pesquisa, pois a IC dá suporte à tomada de decisões baseadas nas análises já efetuadas por outros pesquisadores. Conclui-se que as facilidades oferecidas pelo Zotero contribuíram para a diminuição do tempo gasto com a pesquisa bibliográfica e escrita de artigos científicos. Sua característica de promover interação entre equipes e apoiar as atividades de IC nas fases de coleta e análise, além de gerar relatórios sucintos e objetivos sobre o conteúdo armazenado, o constituem como uma boa escolha para a implementação do SIC em um laboratório de pesquisas. A centralização do banco de dados em um servidor interno contribuiu para a segurança da informação. / Globalization and technological advances lead to very rapid changes, creating uncertainty and hindering the decision-making in organizations. The use of a Competitive Intelligence System (CIS) provides analyzed information, allowing making safe decisions within a short time, facilitating the survival of organizations in a competitive landscape. Some of the techniques used in the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) are applicable to monitor technological and innovation trends, therefore, they are applicable to academic research laboratories aimed at technological development, innovation and practical problem solving. The Embedded Electronics Laboratory (EEL) is attended by undergraduate and postgraduate students (Masters and PhD) of the School of Engineering of São Carlos. Being an academic environment, there is high turnover of human resources, which is detrimental from the standpoint of knowledge. Each researcher who obtains his degree takes away all the material and knowledge acquired during the research. Hence, the coordination of the EEL has been interested in deploying a Competitive Intelligence System (CIS) through the use of computational tools that assist the process of managing knowledge. The Zotero software was used for the implementation, providing information on the completed or in progress researches which are developed at the EEL, especially the bibliography already consulted by other researchers, helping literature review, writing papers and choice of research topic for the new students. As a result, the time spent on bibliographic research and the preparation of quotations and references was reduced, since the software automatically performs these operations, and helps the decision-making, as example, guides the choice of research topic, since the CI supports the decision-making based in the analysis already performed by other researchers. The facilities offered by Zotero contributed to the decreased time spent on literature review and writing papers. Its characteristic to promote interaction among teams and support the activities of CI during the stages of collection and analysis, besides generating succinct and objective reports on the stored content, constitute it as a good choice for the implementation of the SIC in a research lab. The centralization of the database on an internal server contributed to the security of information.